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Last week our Team returned from the Vostochny Launch Site (Russia) where we performed the last check out tests of UWE-4 before launch. The satellite will be launched through the German integrator ECM Space on a Soyuz-2 mission using a Fregat upper stage on 27th December 2018 at 02:07:18 UTC. UWE-4 transportation to Far East of Russia was very smooth, so only a last software update and recharging of the batteries needed to be performed. By now, UWE-4 has been successfully integrated into the launch deployer followed by the integration with the upper stage, the fairing encapsulation will occur today.

This isn’t the first time this topic is brought to our attention but after reading this call I felt obliged to share one of the important parts and a link to the original posting.

Original quote:

“According to the ITU Radio Regulations for the Amateur and Amateur-satellite Services, “Transmissions between amateur stations of different countries shall not be encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except for control signals exchanged between earth command stations and space stations in the amateur-satellite service.” A strict interpretation of this rule means that the specifications of all digital protocols used by Amateur stations should be publicly available, so that anyone is able decode the data. The use of protocols with undisclosed specifications can be seen as a try to obscure the meaning of the data.”

Source: By Dr. Daniel Estévez, an open letter about ESEO telemetry specifications.

Amateur astronomer Scott Tilley made international headlines when he rediscovered NASA’s IMAGE satellite 13 years after it mysteriously disappeared. In this interview with Freethink, Scott discusses his role in the satellite’s recovery, why he enjoys amateur astronomy, and how citizen scientists like him have contributed to our knowledge of space from the space race to the present day.

Dear HAM Community, a QSL Card is a great achievement but what about being thanked directly by a satellite? In a few days, UniSat-6 will thank each radioamateur and enthusiast who has been tracking it during these years. Stay tuned!!

This is a copy of a message send by PA0DLO to the Amsat-BB mailing list with information on how to track Satellites carrying amateur radio payloads that will go into deep space.

All,

Many radio amateurs are familiar with tracking amateur satellites that orbit the Earth in low orbits or high elliptical orbits. Several tracking programs and all required orbital parameters are available for tracking these satellites.

But soon spacecraft carrying an amateur radio payload will be launched towards the Moon and beyond. If amateurs want to track these spacecraft they will need suitable tracking software and orbital elements to be able to calculate the positions of these spacecraft.

Calculations

Unfortunately none of the currently available tracking programs, used for satellite tracking by amateurs, is suitable for deep space tracking. But fortunately two free, open source software packages for Windows, Linux and Mac are available, that will enable deep space tracking:

Probably most amateurs will prefer GMAT, because it is most user friendly, has a lot of documentation and help files, and contains many sample scripts. Scripts that are created by other amateurs can be used without having much knowledge or experience with GMAT.

Measurements

It is not certain that orbital elements for all deep space spacecraft carrying amateur radio payloads will be made available to radio amateurs. Therefore amateurs may need to measure these orbital elements themselves through doppler and ranging measurements. So amateurs will need to set up their own Amateur Deep Space Network, similar to NASA’s DSN, ESA’s Estrack, etc. This will require some stations with large enough antennas and with equipment to carry out doppler and ranging measurements to determine direction and distance to the spacecraft. This new development is an interesting challenge for radio amateurs.